Should Home’s Default Questions Be Rewritten?
by Keara22HI, HSM team writer
“Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.” — Eric Hoffer
Let’s face a harsh reality:
A fairly significant portion of Home’s population — at least in North America — lacks the basic social skills to carry on a conversation with the psychographic melting pot that is Home.
Stop waving your hands. That’s not an elitist statement. I’m not saying you need to be able to have lengthy discussions about Voltaire at the drop of a hat. Rather, I’m simply pointing out that there are a lot of people in Home whose communication abilities — either their competency with a keyboard, level of social skills, or fluency with basic English — are more than a tad lacking.
And here’s the problem: one of the unwritten social mores of Home is that if you are utilizing pre-programmed comments, you are more or less prejudged as deficient. As a result, no matter what the user’s motivation, it is clear that any efforts at real conversation are usually lost.
My suggestion? Rewrite the questions, Sony. Give more choices. And make them the kind of questions that others will be more inclined to respond to:
“How long have you been in Home?”
“Which Home locations do you recommend?”
“What are your favorite PS3 games?”
“Do you like to play online?”
“Which personal space should I buy first?”
I can sympathize with those who are so fed up with the same inane questions over and over again that they practice “creative sarcasm” as a shield. By offering up different questions which deal more with Home itself, the community reaction to newcomers may be a bit more positive.
Using Home as a common topic of conversation for default questions may also help overcome one of the biggest communication barriers in Home: age differences.
The age question is particularly challenging. I hate getting asked how old I am, because more often than not, the implication is that unless you are in my age group, you cannot possibly be interesting. There are incredible prejudice barriers in Home (as there are in our real-world societies), and the age barrier is one of the largest. I have met so many people in Home who have been apologetic about being in their thirties! So often they say, “Wow, I thought I was the oldest gamer in Home!” And then some of them relate a story about being reviled by some kid saying, “Get outta here, geezer!”
A geezer at 40 because the kid’s dad is about that age? Wow. Hate to bring up the obvious, but the age of the average video game purchaser is 40. There are a lot of older users in Home, even if being outside the male 18-26 demographic makes them a minority.
How did this huge breakdown in communication happen in Home? Is it because virtual reality is a new social phenomenon and the guidelines for how to be comfortable in here have not yet been posted? Could it be that, for the first time, people are coming into contact as avatars with other people they would never have met in this lifetime? How does a sixteen-year-old who has never been more than 200 miles from his real home learn to communicate with a forty-year-old widow who lives halfway around the world from him?
Does saying “sup” become a meaningful experience? How does the professional (doctor, lawyer, business exec) who comes into Home to relax after a long day in the office manage to find a pleasant chat when he is knee-deep in high-school students with two-hundred-word vocabularies?
That is why I strongly believe that the present programmed questions be removed and replaced with a much larger menu of possible phrases and questions. No, I am not suggesting, “What are your thoughts on string theory?” or anything of that sort. Rather, some questions that would give some indication of topics of interest, which are a bit less personal in nature.
For example, what would you expect that this group in Central Plaza might be discussing? From outward appearances, it you wanted to be included in the conversation, what would you say? Maybe a programmed phrase like, “That’s really interesting. Do you mind if I listen?” would be a great ice-breaker. It sure beats using “I have no keyboard” any day of the week.
I know that while Home and the PSN are down, it’s impossible for Sony to get a lot of stuff done. That doesn’t mean they can’t examine some of the more social aspects of Home and look at how to possibly improve them, however. And improving the default questions and comments would, in my view, make a new user’s first exposure to Home a lot more pleasant — which, in turn, would help with user retention and likely increase sales revenue.
May 1st, 2011 by keara22hi | 36 comments
Keara is also known in Home as DarthGranny. She is a wicked little old lady with a wild sense of humor.
…You know, that’s such a brilliant and simple idea that I hope it’s something which can be easily implemented. Because I really do think it would help Home’s social scene, and make it easier for new users to find a more welcoming environment.
It would have help me out when I fist began my adventures on home. It seemed to me that nobody wanted to stick around for me to type my questions. I think people would have a better time if they didn’t keep getting ignored or having people be rude because they weren’t fast enough for there likings.
Some questions NOT to use…
“What is your Social Security number and Credit Card pin numbers?”
“Does this Pin Up avatar make me look cheap?”
“How do you get on the bench?”
“Do you look like that in real life?”
Some questions that could work…
“May I ask you a question?”
“Do I have your permission to send you a friend request?”
“May I private message you?”
“Would it be a waste of time for me to hit on you?”
“Where can I get a clue?”
“Please tell me something about yourself?”
“Have you had the great fortune of reading Home Station Magazine?”
Ever wonder what Walt Disney would have programed our avatars to say?, maybe something like this?
But father, I’m alive. See? And… and I’m… I’m real. I’m a real boy!
You buttered your bread. Now sleep in it!
Please, you gotta help me. Be a pal! Call that beetle. Call anybody!
Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday, you will be a real boy.
One thing I like about Free Realms is the greater choice of default phrases. They’re arranged in submenus (Greetings, Disagreement, etc.) similar to our present Emotes menus. It should be simple to add submenus to the L1 button. I hope it happens.
I would also like to be able to program my own default phrases, subject to the usual blocks on naughty words.
Lol,guess we sent ours at the same time but yeah if there was a way to change the phrases that would work for me.
I think they should just get rid of the default questions period.Any new questions would get as old as the current ones are eventually.Also it would force ppl to be a bit more imaginative if they had no default question crutches to lean on.Btw the question i’d use for the above situation would be to ask “Uncle Jesus” if he had the 4th of july sparkler,then produce my own to show him what i was talking about.But then i already know every1 in that pic so maybe i’m the wrong guy to ask?
I agree with your assessment Granny. It has always amazed me that while Sony literally tells us in the TOS not to divulge any personal info in Home or on the PSN, they turn around and have default questions that ask for just that. If how old you are and where you are from isn’t personal info what is it?
I also see Cthulu’s point in that even new default questions would get old fast, but at least they would be more interest driving and conversational than the ones we have now. Here’s an idea, we know that they monitor the chat log anyway, how about they give us new default questions then after about 6 months of looking at chat logs they compile new ones based on the types of questions that people are actually asking already? A change of even a few every 6 months would be a step in the right direction. And adding that L2 option as Seal said would give us a larger range to deal with as well. Just a thought.
PS great article as always Granny!
My thanks to whichever editor (Norse? Terra?) removed some of my more acerbic comment suggestions. I regretted the acronyms and asterisks two seconds after I pushed the ‘Submit” button.
That’s our Keara!
I make no apologies! I started the corporate climb in New York City in 1959 at the age of 21 -- an era when women in the business world were routinely subjected to every kind of harassment that men, intimidated by an ambitious, intelligent, and somewhat ruthless woman, could invent. The most constant attempt at intimidation by them was the language and the jokes. I quickly discovered that unless I could beat them at their own game as well as produce a better profit level for the company, I would end up in the clerical pool with all the other nice sweet little college-educated ladies.
Had to have been Norse. After a six hour stint in a financial planning seminar, and overtired three year old, only thing I wanted to do once the sun went down was hole up somewhere and shut the world out. Therefore if I had edited your article, I would have been of a mindset to wholly endorse your statements 100%.
buy one for the price of two, get the second one free. or ‘if you see a light at the end of the tunnel, then your in the wrong lane’.
I think the quick-chat menu should be programmable. We should be able to replace any of the comments with any comment we wish to have. That could even be part of the Home orientation: “What would you like to have in your Quick-Chat menu?” Give the user the default list and let them change then to anything they want. If nothing else we would see more interesting spamming!
As for the age: I think there’s another side to that issue. It’s not just people looking for others in their age group and people seeking to ostracize those of us who are outside of the assumed age demographic of Home. There is the factor of appropriateness. If I were the parent of a sixteen year old girl I would not want her to have a 40 year old man as an online friend (or one who is 30… or even 25). No matter how innocent the intentions of that friendship, it would be inappropriate in my opinion. Using the age of 18 to determine who is qualified to be on your friends list, one way or the other, helps everyone in Home avoid potentially uncomfortable situations.
I know not everyone feels this way and I know this isn’t a popular opinion. Even I used to think that it’s not the age, but the individual, that’s important. While I still agree that age shouldn’t be our primary focus, my time on Home has taught me that is it an important factor of Home’s social environment.
Valid point. The REAL pervs are very skilled at getting a teen’s trust long before they slide into their real focus. Sympathizing and understanding and offering an outlet (‘your parents will never understand you. come to me…”) are their stock in trade.
I have a lot of teen friends in Home but I am sure their parents assume (and rightly so) that a 72 year old grandmother is relatively safe. Many of them are grieving for a grandparent or parent who has passed away and just want those feelings of being accepted unconditionally. Better they talk to me than fall into the clutches of the very real pervs who lurk in places like Home.
I agree with both of you on this point. I think that we need to be very careful about what we do and say around younger people we encounter in Home. I have a couple of younger friends (under 18 and both female) who feel they can come to me when they have questions or concerns and I am glad to be there for them and I think they value my experience. But when it comes to girls and men that can be a very different ball of wax. I think that in most cases men should steer clear of under age girls just for their own safety. Even if nothing untoward is going on, that doesn’t mean her father will feel the same way if he gets wind of it and that can cause no end of issues for everyone involved. Although there are predatory females in our population as well, they are probably few and far between, so pose a much smaller risk
What you all are forgetting is that people can be whomever they want to be online. I’ve had some “Friends” claim to be a lot older/younger then they really were -- if you’re to trust someone telling you a second time they’re older/younger than they were the first time. There’s no perfect solution to age or even gender identification online, and probably never will be; otherwise it would be implemented everywhere.
The only valid reason I have heard voiced for any age identification online is for Sony to enforce the age limit on Home. I wish they would set that bar a bit higher (if I had a young teenager in my family, I would not want them in Home -- not without supervision) so I would like to see 16 as the minimum age.
As for revealing any personal information at all, why should anyone feel compelled to? This is not a dating service. If you are not looking for someone to ‘hook-up’ with, why would you want to give out information that could be potentially dangerous such as location, age, and gender? It is so easy to have interesting conversations in Home without knowing any real life facts about the people you are talking with.
Well when it comes to gender there are some things i might not say in front of a female that I’d say to a female and vice versa.Knowing anothers gender can give you a clue about their world outlook.I realize this is not a foolproof thing and there may be some females I’d talk to the exact same way as a male and the other way around but these are usually ppl i’ve known for awhile.If i’m meeting a female for the 1st couple of times there are things,usually in the jk department,that i wouldn’t say that i might with a male.Age and location are usually irrelevant to me,except pertaining to time zone,but it would feel odd if a guy all of a sudden was really a girl if i had just told a slightly sexually suggestive jk.If Sony really cared about sexual harassment this could be a problem.As for feeling compelled to give up any info. i don’t think any1 should feel that way but if your playing boy when your really a girl can then the girl feel offended by a sexually suggestive jk that a guy told thinking he was talking to a guy?I don’t think she should but some do.
Correction:Well when it comes to gender there are some things i might not say in front of a female that i’d say to a male and vice versa.
I don’t think a lot of the females in here are so sensitive to male humor anymore. And most of us can give as good as we get.
I’m sure,but i was referring to Home in general.The more i think about it Age could be a problem in the above situation as well.If i tell a jk meant for some1 that told me they were 35 and it turns out they were 12 and their parent/s happened to look at the screen as i told it there may be a problem,more so for the 12 yr old than for me but could be a problem.But then if we acted worried about every low probability situation we would never do anything would we?lol.
Excellent points! Sony needs to get you on staff officially. All this free advice they won’t notice. If they pay you, there is a better chance something might change.
One of HSM’s primary goals is to offer feedback to Sony and other developers which, in some oblique way, might help shape Home and improve the immersive depth of the experience.
In order to do this, it means putting together a Sony-positive and Home-positive fanzine which could contend with professional, commercial publications that actually pay people. And *that* requires a commitment to mature and literate journalism from a team of writers and artists who understand how corporate America works. Only then can we possibly hope to earn the reputation of being a go-to source of intelligent and reasoned feedback.
One of my favorite quotes: “If you cannot say what you mean, you can never mean what you say.” The downside to a lot of fan projects (and even on the Sony forum itself) is that there’s usually a lot of badly-punctuated, overly emotional and poorly-reasoned background noise to have to wallow through for the occasional pearl.
HomeStation’s goal is to try to deliver nothing but pearls. And if we can do this consistently, then hopefully we set ourselves apart from the self-important chest thumping, whinging, caviling, vituperation and other nonsense that drowns out the good ideas.
What impresses me the most about this team — because the credit goes to them — is that they all produce truly outstanding articles like this one, for free, out of a genuine love of Home. Judging from the truly *substantial* audience numbers HSM is generating, as well as whom some of those registered users are, it appears that we’re on the right track.
It would be immensely flattering if an HSM team member, as a result of his or her work with HomeStation, some day ended up working with or consulting with Sony or another developer. Lord knows, there are a lot of people on this team with some pretty outstanding credentials.
I absolutely love the brilliant simplicity of Keara’s idea in this article. And the logic behind it is outstanding. I’ll admit that I hope this is something that eventually filters its way into Home.
With the quality work you guys are all doing, I am sure your articles are being passed around somewhere at Sony. What Keara is calling for would require a core update. Not a complicated one, but it would involve the core. Hopefully those guys are either reading this or someone is sending them a link. I am sure in the coming months your profile will get high enough to appear on their radar. You all are doing great work. Keep it up.
That’s probably the biggest challenge: nearly every suggested improvement HSM has recommended would require a core client update, because they all deal with enhancing the social aspects of Home, rather than the gaming aspects. And the problem with that is that quantifying the potential profitability of such an update — particularly to justify the cost involved — would be a bit more difficult than, say, launching a new game.
What I’m personally curious about is whether or not a lot of social enhancements — new dance moves, new emotes, improved clubhouse functionality, etc. — could be offered as for-purchase options. If so, not only would it make it very easy to quantify the profitability, but it would likely be quite a gold mine for Sony.
Agreed!
Many of the true pervs don’t give their real ages anyways,any1 that is into that kinda thing won’t have any problem coming up with an age that will work for them.They make up whatever story/bio that will catch them prey so i’m highly doubtful that a perv would give their real age to a youngster.On home,and many other places on the interwebs,we only have the other person’s word about their info so avoiding older ppl for fear of predation seems odd to me.I’ve heard many young ppl say that if any1 over 18 was on home they were weird,i guess they think you should retire after age 17 from gaming,lol.I’d like to see these same kids,online,in 5or10 years so i could remind them that they are past their own retirement guidelines.
i used to think that bimbo mentality was for the most part ‘on tv’ or just in the movies. two months ago, as i stood at a counter waiting for the teller, i actually heard two ‘barbies’ having a loud discussion beside me.
barbie 1:i mean i like her, but she wants to move in with us and help pay the rent.
barbie 2:is that a problem?
barbie 1:its just thats shes so old, she’s thirty.
barbie 2:oh, god, really? i see what you mean.
being 47, i REALLY felt like bonking thier heads together, or at least finding out thier names so in ten years i can ask them how it feels to be ‘old’. ugh.
Quite frankly, I’m having more fun now in my thirties (that’s in my thirties, not thirty) than I have ever had in my entire life thus far.
If they think that is old, then they should reserve their spot in the retirement home now while they still have the bare intellectual capacity to do so. I, for one, will be having AC/DC blaring out the sound system attached to my wheelchair/walker once I get there.
WOO HOO!!! (ok, fine, i’ll be blaring moody blues out of mine)
I downloaded all of Roy Orbison from iTunes and burned my own cds. Sounds great in the truck!
“For example, what would you expect that this group in Central Plaza might be discussing? From outward appearances, it you wanted to be included in the conversation, what would you say? Maybe a programmed phrase like, “That’s really interesting. Do you mind if I listen?” would be a great ice-breaker. It sure beats using “I have no keyboard” any day of the week.”
Oh, you don’t want in on that conversation. My friend in the picture, Uncle Jesus, was making black suit guy wish he didn’t log on that day.
I am the person in the 1930’s mafia suit and we were having a very interesting conversation. OIivia Allin was in the pencil sketch outfit, and I am fairly sure “black suit guy” was CountEdmundDante. I think (not sure) the topic was whether or not certain victimless crimes should be legalized. And Uncle Jesus had views that were decidedly secular. A good time was had by all -- even though I walked over, blatantly eavesdropped, and then asked if I could add a comment.
But I got a good chuckle out of your comment, Travis-Travis. Discussions like that -- with that group -- are not for the faint of heart.
But in my opinion make for the most interesting and informative discussions.Yes it is a bit ironic that “Uncle Jesus” regards religion as detrimental to the progress of mankind but like i’ve said before,there are all kinds of ppl on home.As long as you don’t take things to personal and have fairly thick skin these types of convo’s can be very thought provoking.